NETHERLANDS
Fischer fires Ajax clear
Danish teenager Viktor Fischer scored twice as Ajax beat NEC 4-1 to go three points clear at the top of the Dutch league on Sunday. Ajax have 60 points from 28 matches, three more than PSV Eindhoven, who drew 2-2 at Roda JC Kerkrade, and Vitesse, who won 2-1 at home to PEC Zwolle. Feyenoord slipped to fourth with 56 points following their 2-0 defeat at SC Heerenveen on Saturday. Fischer opened the scoring for hosts Ajax after 21 minutes when the 18-year-old picked up a pass from Siem de Jong and broke through the center of the defense, before an own-goal by Rens van Eijden doubled the lead. Fischer added the third 13 minutes from time with a superb lob from outside the area, while Ryan Babel scored Ajax’s fourth after Nick van der Velden pulled one back for the visitors. PSV seemed on track to stay in touch with the leaders when Ola Toivonen replied with a first-half brace after Frank Demouge had headed Roda in front in the 13th minute. However, Sanharib Malki salvaged a point for lowly Roda three minutes from time after finishing off a pass from Mikolaj Lebedynski. First-half goals by Wilfried Bony and Mike Havenaar proved sufficient for Vitesse in their 2-1 win over Zwolle, who pulled one back through Arsenio Valpoort in the 78th minute.
RUSSIA
Beaten Anzhi drop to third
Russian Premier League big-spenders Anzhi Makhachkala failed to narrow the gap on leaders CSKA Moscow and dropped to third place following a 4-0 thrashing at the hands of hosts Krasnodar on Sunday. CSKA, who were due to play bottom-placed Alania Vladikavkaz yesterday, top the table with 49 points from 21 matches, five points ahead of the second-placed reigning champions Zenit St Petersburg. Anzhi now sit third on 42 points. Krasnodar’s Brazilian midfielder Francisco Wanderson opened the scoring in the 34th minute, netting from close range from Vladislav Ignatyev’s cross from the right. Another Brazilian midfielder, Joaozinho, made it 2-0 just two minutes into the second half after a mix-up in the Anzhi defense, before two close-range headers saw Wanderson complete his hat-trick. Meanwhile, Zenit beat Terek Grozny 3-0 at Makhachkala’s Anzhi Arena to leapfrog Anzhi into second place. Terek were ordered to play a home match at a neutral venue after Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who is also the club’s boss, taunted the referee of Terek’s previous league match against Rubin Kazan over the stadium’s loudspeaker system. Belgian midfielder Axel Witsel lifted Zenit 1-0 up in the eighth minute with an unopposed close-range header from Brazilian Hulk’s corner. Portuguese fullback Bruno Alves increased Zenit’s advantage in the 58th minute, firing home after Viktor Faizulin’s precise lobbed pass into the area. Midfielder Konstantin Zyryanov rounded off the scoring when he netted Zenit’s third in stoppage-time.
GREECE
Panathinaikos fire Gonzalez
Greek Super League club Panathinaikos announced on Sunday that they had fired Spanish coach Fabri Gonzalez as the financially troubled Athens club suffers one of their worst seasons in the domestic league. The team announced that assistant coach Giannis Vonortas would manage the team for the remaining four matches of the season and possibly in the playoffs, becoming the fourth coach in the campaign, equaling a club record set in the 2004-2005 season. Gonzalez, 58, joined Panathinaikos in January, but failed to lift the team beyond their current sixth place in the league and Saturday’s 1-0 loss at home to Platanias was the last straw.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier